Chinese E-reader trends will affect cyber outreach opportunities and make Chinese language media more easily available. Soon, the domestic market for these Chinese-made devices (by this year most of the world’s Ipads will be made here in Chengdu) will continue to expand as (I expect) some of the manufacturers will want to incorporate the Chinese menus and Chinese language functionality demonstrated in several Chinese volunteer software development projects.

As sino-bookworms will attest, the Chinese book market is chaotic and good books can be hard to find — sometimes just because they are good books albeit not necessarily politically correct. I remember when Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs came out, they were circulated on the Internet in a PDF file that I was able to download before the propaganda forces of ideological rectitude managed to stop the websites harboring it. Perhaps in a China with many millions of Chinese language e-readers the spread of unconventional books will be that much wider and faster. Ideas have already been spreading for years on computer screens — Liu Xiaobo some years ago called the Internet “God’s gift to China”.

My wonderment at the prospects for Chinese language e-readers and e-books question came to me after I bought an imported Kindle locally on the Tabao website.

I offer this introduction to colleagues thinking of jumping into the Chinese e-book world for general wisdom boosting. I have been reading e-books on my computer for years. The popularization of eye-friendly e-readers will make this more comfortable.

E readers like the Nook, Kindle and Ipad are becoming popular in the US but have lagged in China where many of them are made because of Chinese language display problems. Recent upgrades have improved Chinese text display and some Chinese computer experts have developed free alternate operating systems such as Duokan and applications software for some readers.

Portable computers and readers are interesting to many Chinese not only for the manufacturing and export opportunity but also as a reading device and naturally as a device for reading Chinese. The Ipad already supports Chinese well but it does not use the e-ink screens that I understand have some benefits for tiring eyeballs.

As the ebook market grows in China, I expect we will be able to find more and more hard-to-find Chinese books online.

The latest Kindle and the Nook can handle Chinese; they handle it even better with the improved fonts and Chinese language menus and some added functionality that users can add to their readers using free mass-sourced volunteer software such as Duokan (a veritable Chinese Linux-like voluntary cooperation project) . For now, the techies and advanced adopters can do the upgrades for themselves and their friends. Be careful: adding this software to your machine may void the warranty. Duokan-Lite is dual boot and so you can choose which system you want to run when you start your e-reader.

The Duokan website offers a dual boot system for the Kindle 3 (the kind with buttons, not the touch, at least not yet as far as I understand). The second system is duokan lite, offering better Chinese fonts, Chinese menus and compatibility with some ebook formats such as ePub not now supported by the Kindle.

There are a number of ebook formats — epub is the most popular although it is not supported by the Kindle. However the Duokan-Lite operating system recently released for the Kindle 3 (not the touch, the one before that with the keyboard) does support epub.

The Kindle Touch I bought from Taobao does display Chinese text well, although some people are loading their e-reader with more attractive Chinese character fonts. The Calibre donation supported e-book software is handy for converting between various e-book formats. You could download to your home PC this software at http://calibre-ebook.com/

More background on English-language websites for the Duokan operating system which will be useful for people who would like to use their Kindles in Chinese.

Perhaps Kindle and the other e-reader companies will focus on the Chinese market (in a sense the home market since many of these e-things are made in China, and half the iPads here in Chengdu) and we’ll see official Chinese enhanced Kindle versions for the Chinese market. There may be some ideological security considerations for the PRC authorities to consider to allow that officially, but it is happening now with advanced users installing free third party software on Kindles imported from the US.

There has been a lot of activity about the Duokan operating system which works on a number of hardware platforms including some Android ones over past few weeks, the English language websites talking about the Duokan operating system are being updated. So you may want to check in regularly. The free operating system development on the duokan website (first above) is an interesting example of open, voluntary software development.

These discuss the Chinese operating system on the Kindle3 — the one with the keyboard — (it does not yet work for the Kindle Touch; installing third party software on Kindles may void the warranty, although there is the Duokan lite version that lets one choose either the Kindle OS or duokan) but judging from the rapid development of duokan evidenced on the duokan websites) there are some dictionaries you can get.

The Kindle Fire can support Chinese. You can use the Kindle in Chinese per the Google Oracle

Chinese E-reader trends will affect cyber outreach opportunities and make Chinese language media more easily available. Soon, the domestic market for these Chinese-made devices (by this year most of the world’s Ipads will be made here in Chengdu) will continue to expand as (I expect) some of the manufacturers will want to incorporate the Chinese menus and Chinese language functionality demonstrated in several Chinese volunteer software development projects.

As sino-bookworms will attest, the Chinese book market is chaotic and good books can be hard to find — sometimes just because they are good books albeit not necessarily politically correct. I remember when Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs came out, they were circulated on the Internet in a PDF file that I was able to download before the propaganda forces of ideological rectitude managed to stop the websites harboring it. Perhaps in a China with many millions of Chinese language e-readers the spread of unconventional books will be that much wider and faster. Ideas have already been spreading for years on computer screens — Liu Xiaobo some years ago called the Internet “God’s gift to China”.

My wonderment at the prospects for Chinese language e-readers and e-books question came to me after I bought an imported Kindle locally on the Tabao website (I used my debit card from the China Construction Bank) .

I offer this introduction to colleagues thinking of jumping into the Chinese e-book world for general wisdom boosting. I have been reading e-books on my computer for years. The popularization of eye-friendly e-readers will make this more comfortable.

E readers like the Nook, Kindle and Ipad are becoming popular in the US but have lagged in China where many of them are made because of Chinese language display problems. Recent upgrades have improved Chinese text display and some Chinese computer experts have developed free alternate operating systems such as Duokan and applications software for some readers.

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About 高大伟 David Cowhig

Worked 25 years as a US State Department Foreign Service Officer including ten years at US Embassy Beijing and US Consulate General Chengdu and four years as a China Analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Before State I translated Japanese and Chinese scientific and technical books and articles into English freelance for six years. Before that I taught English at Tunghai University in Taiwan for three years. And before that I worked two summers on Norwegian farms, milking cows and feeding chickens.